A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the patent and trademark office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to electronic commerce, more specifically electronic storage and retrieval of information.
2. Description of the Related Art
The ordinary paper business card has become ubiquitous worldwide. Social rituals have even developed concerning the exchange and scrutiny of these small slips of cardboard. By some estimates, billions of business cards change hands every day, yet the cards themselves have numerous shortfalls. Each business card contains only static information on the cardholder, i.e., the person for whom the card was printed and whose name is on the card. Business cards must be reprinted every time any cardholder information (such as a phone number, electronic mail [email] address, or title) changes. Business cards consume not inconsequential amounts of space, yet lack an inherent card-to-card organization. Thus, it can be difficult to retrieve information from a stack of cards, especially if that stack numbers in the hundreds or thousands of cards.
Privacy of information is also a growing issue among modem business people. By definition, the information on a card is public, yet other information (such as a mobile or home phone number) is necessarily shared with some acquaintances. In such situations, the cardholder or recipient must fumble for a pen and the additional data must be dictated and captured.
Dynamic access to the cardholder by others is not addressed by the prior art business card, as it only shows static location information as of the last printing of the card. Thus, if a business person is based in Huntington, N.Y. but happens to be traveling to San Jose, Calif., that person""s business card will not reflect the California address or phone numbers.
Electronic means of capturing and storing conventional business card data are currently known. Examples of this technology include card scanners, personal digital assistant (PDA) devices and related software, electronic address books, commercial email programs such as Microsoft(copyright) Outlook having their own electronic address books, xe2x80x9csmart phonesxe2x80x9d or PDA/wireless communication device hybrids, Internet (also referred to as the World Wide Web, or simply xe2x80x9cWebxe2x80x9d) based contact organizers, and the like. This technology all suffers from the same limitation in that it generally lacks multi-level privacy for users and cardholders, it cannot help locate the cardholder, it (generally) lacks the ability to seamlessly export to or import from other database systems, and (with the possible exception of some prior art Web-based contact organizers) it lacks centralized control and universal access.
What is needed is a widely-accessible electronic service and method for organizing contact information entered by cardholders, including but not limited to all of the information on a standard business card. This service must provide for the ability to export data to standard databases. Privacy of information should be configurable at an information record and field level by the cardholder so that access to some records and some fields in all records can be denied to certain people while access to other records and fields is still allowed. A location feature to allow service users to determine how to best reach a listed cardholder at a given time is also desirable. A dynamic electronic link, such as the well-known Internet hyperlink, is also needed to connect the recipients of email from a cardholder to the service.
In one embodiment of the present invention, an electronic business card (EBC) access and organization system operates from a Web-based computer system that includes a database and software for managing access, data privacy, and dynamic updates. The cardholder database, i.e., the database containing records of each registered cardholder (or xe2x80x9cMemberxe2x80x9d of the EBC system), is accessible from any Web browser connected to the Internet. Examples of such common Web browsers are Microsoft""s Internet Explorer and Netscape(copyright) Navigator(copyright). In an alternate embodiment, the EBC system may be installed behind a conventional network xe2x80x9cfirewallxe2x80x9d security device and thus made accessible only to browsers connected to and authorized to use the intranet defined by and behind the firewall.
Access to and delivery of contact information in the EBC system is not limited to a Web browser interface as commonly known today. Some embodiments of the present invention provide multi-mode access interfaces, including but not limited to interfaces using voice-controlled and conventional wireless PDA and/or cell phones, two-way pagers, and wireless access protocol (WAP)-enabled devices. Further embodiments of the present invention provide data delivery interface embodiments using, for example, the common alphanumeric pager, wireless markup language (WML), or voice delivery (e.g., audio playback) systems commonly used in the art.
A location tracking feature is provided in some embodiments by a rapid update service, accessible only to the cardholder (or his designee). Protected by password, this feature allows the cardholder to rapidly designate one of a pre-defined set of contact locations described by physical (i.e., meatspace) address, phone number, FAX number, and/or email address. Alternately, the cardholder may define a temporary contact location not normally stored in the database system. These embodiments thus allow more rapid communications between users seeking cardholders by eliminating the need for users to place repetitive phone calls, FAXes, or emails in an attempt to locate a cardholder.